Sunday, 26 June 2016

Hello again, as promised last time, we can report on an excellent 2016 Boys Weekend Away, when 6 plus 1 later ! (nice to have you with us Tony), of us headed into scenic Staffordshire and deepest Derbyshire to visit, the Crewe Heritage Centre, very friendly, fascinating place, loved the Exeter South Signal box, and the American HO scale model railroad, courtesy of the Calder Northern Group of the NMRA, what a great place to have a Clubroom!

Terminus time at the Crewe Heritage Centre's 7 1/4" line

........the Ecclesbourne Valley Railway, lovely ride to Duffield (cab rides again!) and an impressive collection of DMU's.... the 10 1/4" Rudyard Lake Steam Railway (cab rides, thanks Guys!), lovely setting and good collection of locos, some from now defunct Isle of Mull Railway....the Foxfield Railway, never seen so many Industrial locos all at once, and very interesting 7 1/4" Foxfield Miniature Railway, plus great tour of the facilities, thanks Guys..... the Churnet Valley Railway, they have a 'Hotspur' too, bit bigger than ours though, ex Polish 'Tkh' tank which hauled us on our round trip with Class 33102 'Sophie' on the other end....,

Polish tank 'Hotspur' on the Churnet Valley line

.... and on the way home on Sunday, our Friends at the Nottingham Club, made us more than welcome as usual, providing a lovely lunch and a look around their proposed track extension area. Rain, (shame there was a Birthday Party in progress !), and lack of time prevented us from having a drive round, but, hey ho, great place to stop for lunch and a chat with the Guys to catch up. Hope the Irish trip went well Roy.

So, a great weekend staying at the Travel Lodge at Trentham, Stoke -on -Trent, excellent, good rooms, great food and very friendly staff!

The Riches 'Tog the Tug'

Then on Saturday 18th June, we had a visit once again from Mike and Charlie for a fun day, with their new 'Spuggy' type diesel loco, 'Tog the Tug', which had a good time around the circuits in amongst some of our trains, very powerful, impressive loco, which will be helping out on a future Open Day, methinks. Excellent day, did some more training of our Guys, and had lots of fun.

So, back to earth with the other stuff, we have been having problems for some time now with our power supply down to the Laurel Sidings shed, tripping out, particularly when it's wet, and has it been recently ? oh yes. So, after much deliberation, discussions, (we are experts at discussing) and checking, we think there is a fault on the cable itself, so new cable has been purchased and our major Civil Engineering Works Gang, (TWITS for short), have been mustered to excavate and install the 60 metres or so of armoured cable and some smaller stuff for possible extra demands on S and T installations. The work is progressing well, as the photos show, and we hope to have it connected up soon !!!!

Cable trench work in progress!!!!!!

In reality, trench work at the ALR!!!!

Still having problems with 'Hotspur's 'Hinjector' so we are hoping our friendly Consultant Monsieur Brian B will pop across to have a look at what is not going right!!!

and, finally, we are a bit concerned at the amount of rain we are having which is leaving the ground very wet, could result in us having to cancel next Sunday's Open Day, but we will see how the parking area dries out during the week, so watch this space if you are thinking of visiting.

A Class 20 comes along the tracks at RuddingtonAll photos: Brian M

Phew.....TTFN

P.S. Just in case you were wondering.......'TWITS' = Track Work Installation Team !

Tuesday, 14 June 2016

Now we are back from our Boys Weekend Away, and more about that next time, we can catch you up with recent events.....our June Open Day was excellent, thank you for coming to see us, we had a very enjoyable afternoon with an interesting variety of visitors, and we had time to chat, which is always good ! Our friends from Suffolk helped us out again with David bringing his Romulus, and Paul his Sweet William, so we had four steam locos out, a first methinks for the ALR ! We gave General, Chieftain, The Shay and Sergeant a run out and everything went well, culminating in a great finale with two double headed steamers, another first for us !!!!!!

The Sweet William and the Romulus preparing to depart with Tony and Dave driving

The double header approaching the station

On the work front, we are still tweaking Hotspur's pipework which we hope will remedy the reluctant injector, The steam locos each have their own storage box in the loco shed now, so no excuse for losing bits !!!!
Lots of gardening being done as everything is growing like mad! We had a hedge cutting 'land train' to help do the boundary hedge which is looking tidy again now. Track maintenance continues as always, the gates have had a green stain update and the fencing is about to be done, maybe !

Ken about to take Sergeant and four passengers for a trundle round
All photos by Graham Reeve

And, a bit sad, one of our members, Ray H is moving away and so we gave him a bit of a send off last week, with sausage rolls, pork pies etc, (any excuse!!!), to thank him for all his efforts on the ALR over the years, but he and his good Lady will be coming back to Norfolk to visit friends in the future, so we will will be seeing him again.

About the ALR

The Ashmanhaugh Light Railway is a 7¼ inch gauge railway, set in the beautiful North Norfolk countryside, within earshot of the whistles of the Bure Valley Railway and the Bittern Line trains. It really is well worth a visit, a must for any rail enthusiast.

How to find us

We're just past Wroxham off the Stalham Road at Beeston St Lawrence (signposted Ashmanhaugh) or if you come to Wroxham Barns take the first right after the Barns, then left at the crossroads and the Railway is on the left, just follow the signs on Open Days.